Tag: tea

These cold days are quiet and sweet. I am trying this year not to immediately begin pining for spring and planting season. I figured I won’t even look at seed catalogues (oops) or plan out my garden (weeelll…), but I am enjoying the relaxation. You know, spring and summer is filled with baby animals, and digging, and planting, and harvesting, and watering every day, and preserving, and weeding, and more! Winter is for settling in and restoring. In the spring and summer we get more done because the sun is out. Right now in the freezing dark of suppertime we stay in. What do you like to do on winter evenings?

I am the self proclaimed rummy queen. It’s probably best because I am terrible sport! I used to play rummy with glasses of iced tea with my great-grandma. I remember double decks and a large table of family playing at my grandma’s house. I remember my cousin, Helen, teaching me how to play when I was eight years old on our way up to a cabin with my grandparents. Doug grew up playing gin among other games. Do folks play cards anymore? After dinner the past several nights the shuffling of cards can be heard from our dimly lit kitchen table. Laughter, music, and memories.

Winter is also the time to catch up on books! We love to read and we end every evening with reading and a cup of steaming tea. Right now I am reading, Meeting the Medicine Man by Charles Langley. It is out of print and I highly suggest you try to secure a copy off of Amazon. It is fabulous. I last read it ten years ago before I started working with medicine people. It is a glimpse into the world of the Navajo and medicine people. Of good and evil and the people that help keep the community safe and bring things back into balance. What are you reading?

My television is covered by a painting. We rarely utilize it but for our favorite show (The Voice) and football and the occasional movie night. It is more pleasant with it not being the center of attention. We are able to converse more easily, make more memories, and enjoy the ease of these lovely winter evenings.

Booboo is our oldest cat in the house right now. He is in his second generation of kids. He waits excitedly by the door if Maryjane arrives. When Booboo was a kitten, our son Andrew trained him to run to his room if he played Bob Marley. Booboo walked around sporting a tiny Jamaican hat with fake dreadlocks. This kitty is beloved. Apparently not so much to our young cat.

Chuck wants to be king, apparently. Who can really understand cats? I wonder why they are my favorite animals sometimes with all their ferocity and claws. Or teeth, in this case.

The night before last, we turned out the light and Booboo jumped on the bed and curled up between us as always. We noticed a horrible smell and he was suckling madly in the dark. We turned on the lights and noticed that he had two very defined bite marks on his hip. Deep, about a quarter inch, and oozing with puss and infection.

These are the times I am grateful to be an herbalist. Not much throws me. I grabbed the wound healer, and using a dropper, applied it into the wounds.

Yesterday morning the puss was gone but the smell was there and I could see the muscle tissue in his leg. (Chuck is grounded, by the way, and may very well become the shop cat at our new store!) I went out to the garden and harvested calendula, yarrow, echinacea, and comfrey. Calendula, echinacea, and yarrow are anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and are natural blood cleansers and antibiotics. Comfrey could honest to god heal the world. It binds tissues and bones and heals quickly. I placed these into a wide mouth pint jar with 3/4 teaspoon of sea salt and poured boiling water over the tea. That sat and brewed for about an hour. I left a little room to add cooler water to make it temperate. Once it was cool, it was ready.

Booboo was certainly a good sport and let me squeeze the fomentation into the wounds using a flat cotton pad. I added the wound healer again. The wound healer was used that morning as well. A repeat application of tea and wound healer was given again last night. This morning it looks clean and on the mend. He will get the same treatment today and I have no doubt that by tomorrow morning he will be nearly healed.

It is always wise to have herbs on hand to make fomentations (a tea you put on topically) or infusions (a tea you take internally for medicinal purposes), but a good wound healer can save the day. We have used it when Doug cut his finger down to the bone with a hatchet. We have used it for burns from the wood cook stove. We have used it for every cut or wound. It replaces stitches, kills infection, and helps the body heal itself quickly. It also helps with pain.

First start with a base. This is an extract. In a pint jar, fill 20% with herbs like the ones listed above and top with vodka. Leave in the window for two weeks. Pour some of the finished extract into a half-pint jar, about 1/4 full. Fill the jar with filtered water. This is your diluted base for wound healer. (Believe me, you need to cut it.) In a 4 ounce jelly jar, combine 1 part finished, diluted base and 1 part aloe vera gel. (Please make sure it is actually aloe vera gel! You’d be surprised what they put in cheap aloe vera. You should opt for the bottle that is nearly 100% aloe vera gel with a small percentage of preservative. Otherwise it will rot too quickly.) I like to add about 10 drops of tea tree oil and 10 drops of lavender.

There you go! You are ready to take on cat bites, sunburn, cuts, boils, and battle wounds from the garden or kitchen. This is a great addition to your homestead pharmacy!

For more recipes and to build your own homestead pharmacy, click HERE to check out my book, “The Homesteader’s Pharmacy” on Amazon.

Hibiscus is a lovely house plant as well as prolific grower in the garden. There are varieties for less than tropical environments. It gives a nice Hawaiian feel to the window during a snowy day if you keep it in a pot. You may be familiar with hibiscus tea. Hibiscus is added to many a tea blend and imbues a rosy hue to the finished drink. But, hibiscus is not just a tasty, tart tea. It is, in fact, medicine.

Hibiscus is one of the most potent medicines in the health of the kidneys and blood. It will help regulate blood pressure in minutes. It’s good friend, Mistletoe leaves, helps it work in ten minutes or less to return blood pressure to its desired numbers.

Because blood pressure is regulated by the kidneys, it is an obvious conclusion that kidney function and detoxification must be assisted in order to remedy blood pressure. The kidneys filter a quarter of the blood every two minutes. We can safely assume that hibiscus assists in kidney function as well.

I use a lot of traditional spirit medicine in my practice, since you cannot reasonably separate the mind and body from the spirit. Hibiscus is used to help heartache, anxiety, or the sadness from loss. Not as an anti-anxiety, but as a beautiful plant who assists in healing the spirit. Incidentally, the circulatory system is affected by heartbreak. Hibiscus is used for blood…so that means the circulatory system…which is a connected with the heart. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Once the flower folds back up, snip it from its stem and dry it in a paper bag for a few weeks. Cut up and store in a sandwich bag or jar. Use 1 teaspoon per 1 cup of boiling water and let steep 5 minutes. It is quite sour so a bit of honey or maple is nice. Perhaps add combination of roses, lavender, hawthorn berries, yarrow, and/or dandelion for a lovely effect on the kidneys, blood pressure, and on the spirit.

I would cordially like to invite you to the Colorado Springs Home and Landscaping Show this weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you love decorating, improving, gardening, and events as much as I do, you will love this show! HGTV, inspiration, ideas, and of course, White Wolf Medicine will be there! And yours truly is one of the guest speakers. I will be speaking all weekend about how to create an Apothecary Garden, how to create a Tea Garden, and about High Altitude Farming; Tried and True Tips.

So, if you already know me and Doug, come out and say hello. If you haven’t met us, come out and introduce yourself. I would love to meet you. Maryjane Rose will be there Friday and Saturday as well helping me spread Farmgirl cheer!

Could a simple cup of tea help you keep your New Year’s Resolutions? Can a simple cup of tea act as medicine?

I drink four cups of tea with herbs in it daily. Each batch is slightly different. I will make a month’s worth of tea at a time. This month’s tea is made up of many herbs that help with the lymphatic system, essentially boosting immunity since I work in a busy apothecary with lots of folks with colds! I also added plenty of herbs for circulatory and heart health. A bit of wild yam for progesterone. And some chai tea to make it all taste amazing (which is also for the circulatory system).

I love this thermos I got from Teavana. It has the tea strainer built into the top. I can also easily add ginger, or orange, and honey to my mixture. I drink more fluids if I have it with me. Here are some additions to your daily tea, green or black, that will help you achieve your physical goals.

If you want to increase focus and memory so you can get organized– Add 1 part rosemary and/or sage to 3 parts loose black or green tea.

If you want to lose weight– Dry your citrus peels in a paper bag for three weeks then store in a sealed container or freezer bag. Or just purchase dried orange peel. 1 part citrus peels to 3 parts green tea with a little cinnamon added will help metabolism and detoxing.

If you want to help your heart and circulatory system be stronger– Add 1/2 part each; ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom to 3 parts black tea like earl grey or even chai.

To decrease inflammation and boost immunity- Add one part basil to 1/4 part turmeric and 1/8 part pepper to green tea.

If you want to find more inner peace and calm– Combine 1 part each chamomile and lemon balm with 1/2 part roses and lavender with 3 parts Earl Grey. Delightful.

Simple kitchen herbs and teas can be powerful, safe, and delicious medicine!

Delicious, hot chai. Nothing better. Since I can’t hang out at the Indian restaurant every day slurping down chugs of spicy, sweet sustenance, I figured I better learn how to make it myself. All recipes are meant to be improved on but this one is pretty darn good. Mix it with fresh goat’s milk or milk of choice and enjoy it warm. Add what you like, take out what you like, create, inspire, enjoy. Chai is perfect for early spring mornings.

Combine in a pot:

6 cinnamon sticks

2 Tablespoons of cardamom seeds

2 Tablespoons of brown sugar

2 Tablespoons of honey

2 whole nutmeg

2 Tablespoons of coconut

1 bay leaf

1 vanilla bean

1 inch piece of ginger plus 8 pieces of candied ginger

1/2 Tablespoon of whole cloves

1/8 teaspoon of pepper

3 teabags of black tea

8 cups of water

Simmer for one hour

Strain tea into a 2 quart jar. To serve, combine half chai with half warm milk or to taste.

The five owls perched overhead near me each morning as I wrote, prayed, cried, and did yoga. The temporary farm we were on last summer was a beautiful place. I knew we were about to lose everything and the dread of what was going to happen next and the scrambling for some semblance of sanity and organized planning to move forward tangled with each other in that open field as I sat cross legged in the early morning sun peering across the acres of unscathed plains, my eyes taking in the sight of watercolor mountain tops still touched by snow across the horizon. The owls looked on. Directly at me. Their messages clear and soothing. Change was coming, but it would be for the best.

During that time I jotted down each little message that came to me. Different plants came to mind to be made into teas. I knew the spiritual use for some of them like roses-love, hawthorn-heals a broken heart, but some of the herbs that came to mind I did not know the meaning of and looked them up to find that they had a perfect place in each tea blend. After I wrote, meditated, and listened, I went into the old farm kitchen and made a large mug of tea using those herbs for the day. I would feel my strength return. I did this for twelve days.

Eight months later the pieces fell together in one seamless layout. In one day the book was completed. A twelve day journal that discusses spirit animals and chakras, highlights a word to meditate on, a quote, a writing prompt, a gratitude section, a place to jot down other healthful habits, places to write and dream, and a spiritual tea blend. I carefully hand blended each tea in each tea bag and placed them all in a pretty cellophane bag, one for each book that was printed. It took days but I knew that this journal and the healing teas with them would help others just as it had me.

The cover of the book is a photograph of one of the owls that stayed near me during my time on that farm while this book was creating itself. This was one of the infant horned owls that looked on. My daughter, Emily, stayed up in a tree for some time waiting to capture this shot. It serves as a reminder that we are not alone and that everything in the universe works together to help us on our journey.

“White Wolf’s Spirit Journal; Twelve Days of Balancing, Healing, and Energizing the Spiritual, Emotional, and Physical Self” is only $25 plus shipping. Call to order-(303)617-3370 or send a check to White Wolf Medicine, P.O.Box 2012, Elizabeth, CO 80107 for $35 to order. Better yet, come into my shop, have a cup of tea, and pick one up!

“Oh no…” I said when I saw my husband. He was coming down with the virus that has kept me doling out medicine from my shop all hours for the past six weeks. I went over to retrieve my medicine bag, that I always keep on me, and noticed I had somehow left it at the shop.

I considered driving back to Elizabeth but then it occurred to me that there is a whole lot of medicine in the kitchen. Not made up into sparkling colors of extracts and such but in spice jars.

I pulled out every herb I knew to be anti-viral, anti-biotic, and started cooking.

1 teaspoon of thyme

1 teaspoon of oregano

1 teaspoon of basil

a shake of turmeric

a shake of chipotle

slivers of fresh ginger

a cinnamon stick

I started to pour honey over it (1 or 2 parts honey to the herbs) and starting running out after a tablespoon.

1 Tablespoon of maple syrup and 1 Tablespoon of molasses followed

Roughly, I didn’t measure. That is the nice thing about herbalism and cooking, you can wing it. A bit more honey, maybe there are more things in your cupboard…cumin, rosemary, garlic, it all works.

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Simmer very lightly over low to medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes until well combined and infused. Pour half into a mug and pour hot water over it. Lemon or orange slices can go into the mug. It doesn’t sound very good but the mixture of sweet and spice in a mug of hot water when you are just going under the weather tastes mighty fine and it will kick that cold quickly! Your artillery is right in front of you.

Today I unpack our books and photos, writings and my aprons. I will make this downstairs area emanate life and our love for each other and home. Tomorrow we will pick up all my plants from the greenhouse at Margie’s and will be officially moved out of her home.

I owe Margie and Pat a great amount of gratitude for taking us in while in the depths of despair holding nine cats. We made such beautiful memories over there this summer, flying in Pat’s airplane, feeding the raccoon on the porch while watching bats, enjoying drinks together as the moon rose over the horizon of trees. Their graciousness held no bounds and I am truly thankful.

The shop continues to change and form each day. Each day it looks more and more like how I envisioned it. And in mad rushes it will be done and ready to open Tuesday with cups of tea and glowing medicines ready to pour.

But now I sit here as the dawn stretches and rises quietly over the earth illuminating all the autumn splendor and old trees as the cool breeze awakes the upper branches. My spirit is tired and my back is sore but I sit in peace with my cup of coffee. These things we hold onto to bring us joy. A sip of this coffee brings me back to years of holidays, and years of happiness. Each sip holds magic. We call it Christmas coffee but I start it in October. A sweet reminder of all the fun to come, of trick-or-treating, sharing Thanksgiving meals, of the childlike wonder of Christmas and Hanukkah, and the new beginnings of the New Year.

This year (and last) may have been a wild ride, but all I feel at this moment is peace and intense gratitude. For the memories with my children and family and friends that are family, for sunrises so beautiful they erase the previous day, and for sips of magic coffee.

In a coffee pot, or preferably a French press, add 2 drops of peppermint essential oil to regular scoops of coffee ( I do like a nice strong roast myself, 7 heaping scoops to an 8 cup press) and brew as you would.

Herbs have been used since the beginning of time to heal ailments. Herbs are perfectly synergistic to the animal body and work amazingly all the time. No need to patent or change or manipulate herbs into allopathic medicine, they are perfect the way they are. Since our bodies are so complex it is important to realize and understand that many ailments may not be strictly mental or physical. Everything is interconnected and our spirits and our outer shells work together. So, if one is stressed or consumed by fear, it effects the pituitary gland, which controls the hormones, the lymphatic system, and the nervous system. The pituitary gland is located on top of the head, which incidentally is where the Crown Chakra is located. Our connection as spirit to the Creator and the spiritual realm is concentrated there. Connecting with the Creator, having hope and faith, relieves stress and gives us joy which relieves pain and ailments.

I have written a lot about herbs for physical healing but this piece is about spiritual healing and connection. If you have ever seen a deceased body there is no doubt that it is a shell, an empty vessel. The soul/spirit has gone back to it’s Source. By keeping our connection to the much larger scope of universe and spiritual world, we keep our perceptions clear and also empower ourselves to keep our minds thinking of positive as opposed to negative thoughts. We grow and learn on this journey.

I am writing a devotional right now that will be out this fall. Our family’s favorite gift for holidays was always writing books. Blank sheets of paper waiting to be filled with drawings, poems, and writings thrilled me and the children. Still, a new journal pleases me so. I am writing a devotional that will lead folks through meditation each day and include a spirit tea to secure that meditation with plenty of places to write and dream.

For instance: If I focus on the word LOVE during meditation then my tea would be herbs like hawthorn and roses which are specific to heart which protect and increase happiness. Here are a few blends for you to try. You can get herbs from a local apothecary or online or wild craft them yourself! Most herbs are dried.

LOVE

1 teaspoon of hawthorn berries (heals heartbreak, protects heart)

1 teaspoon of pink or red rose petals (infuses love, mild nervine)

1 teaspoon of rose hips (anti-inflammatory, protects heart chakra)

a 1/4 inch slice of ginger (root chakra, connected to the earth, respect for all)

Pour boiling water over herbs. This makes 2 cups. I like to reuse the herbs later that day. A quart a day of this tea is lovely. My friend infused delicious honey with lilacs (one of my favorite flowers) and I use that in my teas.

PROTECTION

1 teaspoon of angelica (creates shield of protection on home and self)

1 leaf of bay (protection from evil spirits)

1 teaspoon of lavender (calmative, faith)

1 teaspoon of roses (love, heart protector)

1 teaspoon of borage (barbed, happiness inducing/fear reducing)

HAPPINESS

1 teaspoon of St. John’s Wort (named after John the Baptist, protector of spirit)

1 teaspoon of borage (joy, nervine)

1 teaspoon of hawthorn (heart protector)

1 teaspoon of lemon balm (uplifting)

a squeeze of lemon (brightness and joy)

This is our fourth day of the Setting Yourself Free series. I hope that you are choosing happiness, releasing blame, practicing a bit of yoga, taking time to think and meditate, and I hope you will enjoy your tea today. Tomorrow we will dream and plan and manifest!

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Katie Lynn Sanders is an urban Farmgirl, writer, Mama, Grammie, and herbalist. Katie lives with her husband, Gandalf the Great Pyrenees, kitties, and seven chickens in a hundred year old adobe in Pueblo. She is the writer of two blogs; FarmgirlSchool.org and DancingWithFeathers.com. You can find all of Katie's books at www.AuthorKatieSanders.com